


She Climbed the Stars

by savanting



Series: Queen of Revels, Goddess of Tears (One-Shot Collection) [2]
Category: Over the Moon (2020)
Genre: Character Study, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, F/M, Gen, Heartbreak, Immortal Origin Story, Immortality, Loneliness, Lost Love, Moon Goddess - Freeform, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Origin Story, Other, Pre-Canon, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27362761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savanting/pseuds/savanting
Summary: The moon wasn't exactly the best home for a young woman who had just become a goddess. One-Shot.
Relationships: Chang'e & Jade Rabbit, Chang'e/Houyi
Series: Queen of Revels, Goddess of Tears (One-Shot Collection) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998490
Kudos: 23





	She Climbed the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own Netflix's _Over the Moon_ (released in 2020). I am just so fascinated by Chang'e that I keep wanting to revisit her POV in different fic incarnations. I wrote this while listening to the soundtrack's song "Ultraluminary" on repeat, and...there are just so many blanks to fill with this song! I mean, yeah, you get the sense that she has a big ego, but _how_ did she get that way? I want the answers to these questions! And so I write. Please enjoy!

Those first days on the moon – Chang’e wished she could forget them. The cold was nothing like she had ever felt before; her ornamental clothing, layered though it was, did little to shield her from the elements of the white desert that stretched in front of her. Even Jade, loyal companion that he was, had huddled against her for warmth.

It would have been too easy to cry, to let her tears drown the dust and puddle the craters of the moon. It would have been too easy for her knees to buckle, her gowns pooling around her, as her head sunk in her hands. It would have been too easy to crumble then, her mortal life left behind in some other existence.

_Houyi, what have I done? What kind of life have I cursed myself to?_

Did time even exist in this span of a place? All her life, the moon had greeted her each night, but she had never thought she would one day call it home.

The legends about her would say she was a foolish woman who had traded away love for immortality, but would anyone think about what she had given up? And for what? The moon was no dynasty or kingdom. What it would become – that would all be by her and Jade’s hands. But that was a long while away.

In the present, _her_ present, Chang’e was a scared woman who knew little about the repercussions of what would occur after she drank the elixir of immortality. Houyi had left it in her care, but war had called him away. His last goodbye to her had been to press the red elixir, bound up in glass and a stopper, into her open hands.

When the thief had come in the night, she had thought only of protecting what Houyi had left in her care. It had been easiest to drink the whole vial – and then even when the thief had stabbed her, the wound had not bled. The only thing that would have told her she had been attacked was the tear in her clothing.

Even now, that small rip was the only sign that anything had really changed at all.

What she had never expected was to rise – for her body to lift from the ground as if she had grown invisible wings. Jade had jumped into her arms as she turned this way and that, not understanding what was happening to her. Her hair fell free of its ornaments, black locks flowing behind her as her body left the earth behind. Grass, trees, sky, clouds – these were things she would never see again, so she didn’t know then to say goodbye, to bid farewell to the trappings of a mortal, finite life.

The stars had greeted her like old friends, and the moon grew larger and larger until her shoes tapped down on the barren expanse, ivory and shadow stretching for eons.

Jade quivered in her arms, and Chang’e felt the threat of tears rise behind her eyelids.

 _This is my life now,_ she thought. The earth was a swirl of white and blue and green, like a gem that changed its colors dependent on the sunlight.

Looking at her once-home, Chang’e had never felt so helpless.

Then Jade looked up at her, his big eyes wide and fearful. She laid a soothing hand upon his head.

“We’ll be all right,” she said, trying to convince herself just as much as she hoped to do for the rabbit. Chang’e did not allow herself to look back at the taunting sphere of the earth. She did not need to feel another urge to cry. “We just have to make the best of it.”

The _how_ of it came to them in segments: whatever magic had been imbued into Chang’e’s body with the elixir, she was able to make sure that she and Jade did not need things like sustenance or breath or even water as they had needed on earth. The moon offered no way of shelter or comfort, and those first days – they felt like years, even though the orbit patterns told her differently – meant wandering across the moonscape.

If Chang’e had not been able to see the sun and the earth, she would have thought she had died and been banished to a special kind of hell. As a woman of earth, she had been sheltered compared to a man, but she had still had nature to observe and interact with: koi ponds, trees hung with fortunes, even the soft touch of a breeze. But the moon was no such place.

Only the stars watched her and Jade, and eventually she took inspiration from their gleam.

“Imagine if the moon had a festival,” she murmured to Jade. Even though he could not speak back to her, it was a comfort to talk to him; she might have forgotten speech altogether if he had not been there beside her. She waved her hands to the sky cluttered with all those pinpricks of light. “What if we could capture all those stars and make them shine here for us?”

Jade cocked his head, and Chang’e sighed to herself. “Silly idea, I guess. But – don’t you miss the festivals? The singing, the dancing, the colors, the – the life of it.”

But Jade was only a rabbit then, long before Chang’e had harnessed her powers enough to push him along to further sentience. But if she had not talked to Jade, she might have become the mad goddess of the moon in time. And then what stories would they have told of her on earth?

Chang’e tried not to think of Houyi or what had happened when he had returned home. Would he think she had betrayed him? Or that she had run away to another life entirely?

Would she ever see him again?

When such thoughts would overcome her, Jade would nestle in her arms and rub his head against her cheek. Never had she been more grateful that her husband had gifted this rabbit to her on their wedding day. Jade was the only piece left of that life, snatched away.

In those early days, it had been easy enough to hope that she might be rescued – that her life on the moon would not last an eternity.

Other than talking to Jade, Chang’e kept sane by singing songs from her childhood to herself.

And in this way she realized she could make the moon dust swirl and shift into shapes. It was as if her songs could bring things to life.

It would be a long time before she harnessed this power to populate the moon, but she was only beginning.

The moon would not be a place of solitude and sadness forever.

Someday, the moon would be a palace of lights, and the night would never again forget that the moon existed to bring light to the lonely and wary.

Chang’e would see the moon come alive as her own personal sanctuary – a place of remembrance and reverence, a place where she would rule.

Time was all she needed, and she knew she had an eternity to make her vision a reality.


End file.
